


Seeing You

by quantumoddity



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Healing, Healthy Relationships, Hurt/Comfort, Juno Steel is in Love, Other, Personal Growth, Peter Nureyev is in Love, Post-Episode: s03e01-02 Juno Steel and the Man in Glass, Scars, Season 3, Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-14
Updated: 2020-07-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:56:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25267228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumoddity/pseuds/quantumoddity
Summary: Nureyev realises he's never seen Juno without his eyepatch on. He doesn't care that he hasn't.But he does care about why.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 11
Kudos: 257





	Seeing You

Everything felt like the first time, Nureyev realised in a quiet moment. And he didn’t know how he felt about that. He supposed he felt everything, all at once and in equal measures, rather than something he couldn’t name. 

Their kiss felt like the first time, when he’d gently pressed his lips to Juno’s mid sentence, overcome with twin desires to stop his words because he didn’t think his heart could take any more and the wild desire to just kiss him and have done with it. To cross the line before either of them could think better of it.

When Juno made him come, it felt like the first time. The first time with him or just the first time, it was hard to tell in that tumbling moment that seemed to roll on and on and on. Juno’s tongue and his fingers and his cock, it all felt new in the way things hadn’t been since Nureyev was a teenager. The noises Juno pulled from him, the blushes he raised wherever their skin met, the muscles he made to respond. It all felt like the first time he’d ever explored this body, mapped it out like the schematics of some place he was about to pull something precious from. 

The way they talked, how opening up his chest and baring himself suddenly became so easy, the creeping want to tell this lady everything he was and everything he’d ever wanted to be. That felt like a first too, enough that Nureyev could almost forget how the last time had ended.

It all felt like the first time and there was something to mourn in that, the same as there was something to be thrilled by. 

Except for the one time it was the first. The first time Juno Steel woke up beside him.

Nureyev was conscious first, immediately aware of the body next to him with how slim his bunk was. He slowly placed himself, feeling his arms splayed around Juno, his head lolling on his shoulder, nestled into the hollow of his collarbone. God, he was warm.

Embarrassment shot through him before he was awake enough to get a handle on himself and he stiffened up like a drawn bow. The sudden movement woke Juno too, he was shifting and rolling, leaving Nureyev to cling to him or be tipped onto the cold floor.

Such small things could be miracles, Nureyev thought with some quite mad, still dreaming part of his brain. The sight of Juno Steel freshly awake, for one. The way he pushed his hand through his sleep matted curls, the way his jaw stretched taught in a yawn, the way he blinked his one functioning eye slowly, for more. Every part of it a domestic wonder. 

It had clearly happened by accident, Juno was still in the clothes he’d been wearing last night. Tight black turtleneck and a long skirt that was now rumpled and gathered around his knees. He was even still wearing his shoes, heavy duty boots hanging off the end of the bunk. It started coming back to Nureyev in wispy bits and pieces, slowly knitting together. They hadn’t made love last night, both tired and content just to talk and hold each other. What they’d talked about he didn’t know, it could have been everything or nothing. But he did recall Juno murmuring something about going back to his own room before he nodded off, Nureyev himself already drifting. Clearly they hadn’t made it. 

Another line crossed, when they hadn’t even been looking. Nureyev felt his cheeks redden. 

“What time is it?” Juno mumbled, his voice muddy and indistinct. 

Nureyev looked at his comms on the sill of the small porthole window, it’s screen blinking on and off, “Nine.”

“Shit,” Juno yawned again, long and languid the way a cat would, “Good thing it’s our day off, huh?”

Nureyev managed a light laugh, eyes aching to gaze at him again and catch all those moments of newness, everything unfamiliar and precious, hungrily wanting to press it all to his chest and call it his. But would that be too much? Juno didn’t even seem to notice what they’d done, he was acting like it was nothing…

He risked a glance, feeling like he was sating an addiction. He kept rubbing his broad hands over his face, did his eye irritate him more in the mornings? Nureyev suddenly wanted to know, he wanted to know every little mannerism, every quirk. 

Juno still had his eyepatch on, the one he wore during the day. He even had his make up, though most had been smudged into the pillow, all that was really intact was the eyeliner Nureyev had seen him and Rita putting on at the kitchen table, laughing and joking and making marks on each other’s faces. He remembered how he’d wanted to join in, he’d wanted to share their laughter but had been too afraid to. 

“Juno…” Nureyev murmured, feeling like he needed to say something, starting but not knowing how to finish. 

Juno made a vague noise to show he was listening, rubbing his eye again. But as he did, he caught the tie of it in his thumb and the material lifted back. 

It happened quickly after that. 

Nureyev saw a flash of mottled skin, puckered scar tissue, a messy heal. He felt a tug in his chest, remembering how those marks had got there, how his own palm had come away wet when he’d touched Junos cheek in the darkness of those caves. How much Juno had given to get them out of there. And how much more he’d been willing to give. 

But it was just a flash. In an instant, Juno had jerked the eyepatch back into place, suddenly tense and wary like a cornered animal. All his sleepiness had vanished and he turned his face away from Nureyev, shoulders tight. 

“I...I should get back to my room,” he said quickly, scrambling to his feet, upsetting the bunk as he did and sending Nureyev sliding into the depression left by his body, “Don’t want people talking, right?”

Nureyev opened his mouth, protests and thin agreements on his tongue, but he had no time to get any of them out before his door was open and then closed again, Juno disappearing down the corridor. 

Stunned and hollow chested, Nureyev could only blink in the simulated sunlight as his room realised the movement and leapt into brightness. He could only feel the ghost of warmth in the bed around him and wonder what exactly he’d done wrong.

And it certainly wasn’t the first time. 

Now he was aware of it, the pattern was obvious. As such things often went. 

Juno came back to him the next evening like nothing had happened, their spending the whole night together or the way it had ended. And things went back to the normal they’d forged out of their strange situation; they would talk and kiss and have sex depending on how they felt, slowly growing closer and not only mending what they’d had before but building something stronger around it. What would happen when it outgrew the bounds they’d set, Nureyev didn’t know, but he was content with what it was for now. 

Juno never stayed the night again, no matter how breathless and exhausted they were afterwards. And Nureyev was fine with that, he made himself be fine with that. 

But he was noticing other things. Whatever state they were in when they fucked, whether it was a quick and hurried thing that started over the clothes and only pushed away as much fabric as was necessary to get those key parts of their bodies together, or something slow and languid like candle wax melting it’s way across skin where clothes were pulled away with teeth and hands like some burlesque show, Juno’s eyepatch never went anywhere. When he showered, he would always come back to Nureyev with it in place, even if the rest of him wore nothing more substantial than a towel and a light sheen of still drying water. And every time Nureyev hinted at following him into the shower and messing around in there seeing as they’d exhausted every place in their bunks, Juno would chuckle something about banging their elbows and the idea would be dropped. 

Nureyev realised that, even with knowing Juno fairly intimately by now, he’d never seen him without his eyepatch since the day he’d watched him lose the eye in the first place. 

And that bothered him. 

Not that he didn’t understand wanting privacy, of course he did. It was only a suspicion he knew  _ why  _ Juno didn’t want to be seen without it. That was what he couldn’t abide. 

Nureyev told himself not to push, not to pull ahead before Juno was ready and risk tripping them both. What they had was too precious, too necessary for survival on this ship, in this crew. 

_ You care about him.  _

He had that revelation while brushing his teeth, looking at his own reflection in the fogged up mirror, as he’d been chewing over how to approach this. Not that it should have been a revelation, he realised, once it had settled in and the shock had faded. He’d been slowly falling for Juno since the Zolotovna job, since he’d seen him from across the ballroom and realised an easy, debt free life as her arm candy would mean little and less if that damnable ex-detective weren’t there with him. 

Careful, he told himself, spitting out a mouthful of foam. How many times did he need to have his heart broken by the same lady until he took the hint? How much did he need to risk and lose before he walked away from the table? 

_ But it’s not the same game. And he’s not the same lady.  _

Nureyev sighed and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. This was too big to consider right now, it threatened to press against his chest and break something. But helping him with his eye. He could do that. 

_ But you do care about him.  _

Nureyev sighs. That would be another first.

Nureyev had always loved the ache in his muscles at the end of a job, the low, slow burn that told him he’d worked hard and done well. He was enjoying it even more when it came while he was stretched out across Juno’s chest, feeling his lips pressing against the top of his head and the oddly pleasant wetness between his legs. 

“I should go back…” Juno murmured into Nureyev’s soft hair. 

Nureyev made an unhappy noise, nuzzling into his chest, though inside his mind he’d become alert. There was no point in waiting, why not now?

“You don’t have to, you know,” he kept his tone light and playful, “You could stay here. You did the other night, right?”

Juno shifted underneath him, it felt like the whole world was tilting. It was a while before he answered, long enough to set Nureyev’s heart pounding ten times faster. 

“Really?”

Nureyev lifted his head, “Yes. I...I’d like that. If you would, of course.”

A slow smile spread across Juno’s face, like dawn breaking, “Um...yeah. I’d like that. I’ve never slept too well on my own. Guess I got used to having another person in the room, sharing with my brother all the time. Never feels right when it's just me.”

Nureyev tried not to think about just how long his detective had been sleeping alone and kept his smile in place, leaning in to kiss him softly. 

“So...last time…” he ventured quietly, as he drew back.

“Mm?”

“It seemed like something was bothering you...about your eye?”

Something crept into Juno’s voice around the edges, “Eye’s fine. Hasn’t hurt in years.”

“Not really about it hurting…” Nureyev took a few tentative steps forward, “About your eyepatch…”

“It’s fine,” Juno practically stepped on the end of his sentence and Nureyev could feel him tense where their bodies met, “It’s nothing.” 

Nureyev wanted to pull back, he wanted to let it really be nothing. But some part of him knew if he really did care about Juno, he’d go forwards rather than backwards. 

“Okay,” he said, “But just in case you ever were worried, I really don’t mind how it looks, it wouldn’t change-”

Nureyev stopped, tipping sideways as Juno sat up abruptly, pulling his knees up to his chest like he suddenly needed to have less of himself on display. He turned his face away, just like before, just like something had slipped again. 

No, it hadn’t slipped. Nureyev had pulled it away. 

“Juno…” he murmured, fearful, wanting desperately to reach out and pull him back in but he’d learned better than that. 

There seemed to be a moment in Juno where he could have gone one way or the other. He could sink down further into himself or he could take a tentative step outside of it, in a direction he hadn’t gone before, either because he hadn’t seen it or because it hadn’t been open to him until now. Nureyev would say he couldn’t imagine the bravery it must have taken to go the way he did. He would say, without realising that he’d done it himself several times. That they’d both been doing it for each other since the first night Juno knocked on Nureyev’s door. 

“I guess...I know you saw it happen,” Juno murmurs, “Or at least the aftermath, it was pretty dark down there. And...this is going to sound so stupid but I don’t like the reminder of who I was then. I don’t like knowing that...that I can change on the inside as much as I want but on the outside, I’ve still got all the scars, I still look...like a person who fucked up. And I’m always going to have done that. I’m always going to be the person who hurt you.”

Nureyev was quiet, tucking one leg under himself, thinking of what to say. He was suddenly so aware of how much Juno had just given him, how much he was putting out in the open. And he needed to be careful with it. 

“You are,” he allowed, hands itching to hold him, “But you’re also the person who changed. And, Juno, that...that means everything.”

Juno’s shoulders eased down, slowly, defensives falling away just a little. He turned so Nureyev could see his face in profile, the imperfect curve of his nose that had healed badly too many times, his strong jaw, the edge of a smile that was almost hopeful. 

“It does also look pretty disgusting,” he chuckled roughly. 

Nureyev felt so much relief he was almost giddy as he edged closer to him, “Boys like ladies with scars, don’t they? Especially the scars they earned saving the whole of Mars.”

Juno’s cheeks coloured, “It wouldn’t have hurt anyone. It wasn’t for humans, remember?”

Nureyev’s hand finally reached him, wrapping his arms around his middle and resting his chin on his shoulder, “You didn’t know that. You were still going to do it. And I personally find heroes very attractive, irregardless.” 

Juno gave a short laugh, sounding just as relieved as he felt, like they’d both just taken a leap and landed safely. His hand came up to grasp his arm lightly, as if needing the reminder he was there. 

“Can you...can you take it off?” he murmured, turning his face to Nureyev’s, “I think it’ll be easier if it’s you.”

Nureyev nods gently, moving lightly and slowly so he has every chance to say no and still his hand. But Juno only stilled as his fingers reached the band of the eyepatch and lifted it away, saying nothing. 

INureyev remembered the weeks in hospital after they’d crawled back up onto the surface, the nights Juno wouldn’t be able to sleep with the pain, the splitting headaches, the knowledge that he might wake up before he remembered what had happened and scream for an eye that wasn’t there and never would be again. The doctors had said that his eye couldn’t be saved, that the wound wouldn’t be clean with how ferocious the rupture was.

They’d talked to Nureyev like he was Juno’s husband and he hadn’t corrected them, rather liking that they assumed that. Who else would have stayed beside him all that time, sleeping on the chairs in the waiting room when visitor times had finished, bringing in take out for him, holding his hand when the painkiller in his system had been running dry. They’d told him there would be scarring, the deep kind that wouldn’t fade. 

They’d been right. The new skin trying to grow over the wreckage was tight and shiny, several streams of it running from the centre of his hollow socket like a map of a river’s delta meeting the sea. It hadn’t faded even slightly in the years since he’d seen Juno’s face. 

Nureyev gently touched the raised skin, turning so he could see, though still holding him around the middle. He didn’t flinch once as he passed feather light fingertips over Juno’s scars, watching with a devoted fascination as the former detective’s mouth fell open slightly and a shuddery sigh escaped. The kind of sound someone would make when the storm passed and they realised they were still alive. 

“You’re beautiful, Juno Steel,” Nureyev murmured, hand moving to cup his face protectively, their chests still pressed together. 

He didn’t let his eyes wander once, he didn’t want to miss a second as a smile grew on Juno’s face, as his eye became clear, as he believed Nureyev when he told him something good about himself. 

And it felt like the first time. But Nureyev was determined for it not to be the last. 

**Author's Note:**

> I would love love love it if you left a comment! I'm also on Tumblr @mollymauk-teafleak if you'd like to check it out


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